We've never been wrong. So, now there's been a fight across the street....
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The drug house that was a problem back in 2007 is a drug house again under new ownership. I may have mentioned this once or twice. The landlord actually works for the city! He's Hmong and seemingly only rents to Hmong (we have a lot of them in Wisconsin). One flat is apparently a law-abiding couple with a kid (as far as I can be sure), the other is basically a party house.

They started out with so much traffic the very first day that I just knew. These constantly rotating cars -- mostly Hmong, but some whites and blacks -- would park too close to and sometimes right in front of our driveway. The one apartment generated like 80% of the parking on the block, a clue in itself.

Eventually it progressed to a pretty regular retinue of low-level dealing. I began using the Crimestoppers text message tip service like crazy. The parade of strangers is unnerving, especially when many of them park in front of our house and get out right here. Sure, a lot of them are white kids barely out of high school, but there are some really fun-looking gangbangers in the mix as well.

So I got in touch with the landlord after a couple of months (had to look him up at the courthouse). Unfortunately, the first thing he does is walk up to me and greet me on the terrace the next day he stops by the property. Way to be discreet, asshole. It went downhill from there.

At first he acted all "Oh, tell me what's going on, I'll look out for you", but it became clear that he wasn't really interested in doing anything as activity actually escalated. When we had a guy stumble out obviously high and right in front of me working on the lawn direct a couple of middle-school kids up to the second floor where "He'll take care of you", then when we had the six huge black gangbangers hang out for an hour and then suddenly arrange about four or five cars to do drug deals on the street right in front of our house, he became Mr. Defensive. "I can't do anything until there's an arrest!" and "You can't prove that they're dealing drugs!" Thanks doubly, asshole, I'm thinking about my and my family's safety and you're playing defense attorney.

I finally gave him what for right about the time that the Chief of Police directed an officer to start looking into things personally, and there seemed to be a subsidence of activity. But in reality they moved a lot of their activity from daytime to the 10pm-2am zone. Harder to read license plates, you know. Then, probably in retaliation, they started having people pull up and honk at these times of night. (They pull up and honk all the time anyway. Yet they all have cell phones. Go figure.) So I started calling him and waking up him or his wife whenever we got a blaring honk and car-to-porch yelling. Still, he was probably just telling them to stop annoying me.

It's gotten pretty obvious which of the people on our block are calling the cops (me). The other civilized residents are beholden to the turtle method. Or maybe some of them don't want their own pot sources to boycott them, like the pretty corn-fed girl who was rollerskating around in the street today but on her cell phone arranging to buy "green". (Hi, kid, you're part of the problem.) I've had one (white) guy go "cluck cluck cluck squawk" at me as I'm pulling out for my nightly bike ride, and a couple of days ago the upper porch in question had a guy on it say to seemingly no one in particular except the guy in earshot (me), "Snitching snitching 24/7 always snitching." And today the Hmong kid with the Afro who does a lot of the dealing drove past in an SUV leaning out and giving me the evil eye. So I do feel personally threatened now.

I do go through periods of these long slogs where I start to wonder if I'm being racist by suspecting people. I like to point out (to others, or my own conscience, as necessary) how often I call the cops on white people, or call in white customers of drug dealers. But it still bothers me because I feel I'm not helping the situation by jumping immediately to suspicion before I have anything concrete to go on. And I half-wonder whether the turtles down the street have happier lives because they're keeping to their own business and all. So I also remind myself of something our neighborhood "leader" keeps saying, and he's kept the records to prove it: We've never been wrong about a drug house. At this point, I just know deep down when I'm seeing one start up, especially easy when it's right across the street.

Tonight, though, vindication, hopefully jackpot. Sounds of yelling. F-word you, you b-word. Crash. Bang. Furniture? Things being thrown? I'm raising 911, and thankfully they could hear as glass was smashed and probably a large window. I then saw (and -- stupid motion-activated driveway light -- was seen by) 3-4 (short Asian) gangbangers in the fluorescent white tee-shirt outfit that's common these days tumble out and split up. I managed to get that description and direction of two of them to the cops and those guys were stopped. But others were getting into cars and driving off.

Then the turds -- the white partiers whose money was probably underwriting the whole affair -- came out and got excitedly into their cars. Slumming. This was probably the highlight of their ghetto experience to date.

Cops showed up too late to stop any of them, though. I wish I'd been brazen enough to go out and get THOSE plates, or take flash photos, but then I'm probably in enough trouble with the crew as it is. The cop who went up to the apartment, though, came back down pretty quick. They wouldn't let him in, refused assistance, etc. And when the cops disappeared from our block (they were down questioning the guys mentinoed above) the tenant and some of her friends slipped out to an SUV that pulled up and they skedaddled.

I did wake up and yell at the landlord's wife again. Havne't seen him come down expressing concern for anyone's safety, though -- even his tenants (who I once asked if they were family, the way he seemed to be sympathetic to them). Fuck him. Fuck him so hard.
Thanks for reading. GMOFB etc. But I need to vent.